NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio - Waste Water Division Superintendent Brian Blum said the city is spending $230,000 for a new, pre-engineered steel building that will be connected to an existing Waste Water Treatment Plant structure later this year.

The goal is to expand the maintenance department and consolidate space at the Mastick Road location.

"Every treatment plant has to have a maintenance program, and hopefully, if you're doing your job right, a preventative maintenance program," Blum said.

"This allows us to expand our maintenance department so we can better perform maintenance duties, whether they be reactive or preventative. It really helps us to consolidate some of our storage space."

The new building will have storage racks along the wall. Its main purpose is to be used as a fabrication space.

As far as the plant's operation, which was overhauled beginning five years ago, Blum said the new process to biologically remove nitrogen and phosphorous continually operates well below EPA limits.

"We're probably one of the cleaner, better operated waste water treatment plants in the state of Ohio, at least as far as the amount of nutrients that are released from the plant," Blum said. "We're knocking the socks off phosphorous because of the harmful algal blooms in the lake.

"We're traditionally less than 0.1 milligrams per liter without any chemical addition, which is, at least as far as the industry is concerned, a fairly impressive number to reach."

Next up for the city's waste water program is a $500,000 vac truck purchase scheduled for next year. Blum said the new vehicle could potentially help with flooding issues.

"This will be dedicated mainly towards sanitary sewers," Blum said. "There's a problem in Northeast Ohio with something called inflow and infiltration (INI). Cleaning the sewers allows us to convey more waste water to the treatment plant or to the lift station faster."

The vac truck will help the city identify defects in the system and accumulated debris that could lead to basement flooding.

"That's what we're trying to target, but also at the same time we're televising sewer lines, looking for defects and trying to repair those defects," Blum said.

"We have a sewer-lining program, a sewer-patching program. Those things are more targeted specifically at preventing basements from taking on water or flooding."